Three House bills worthy of passage

When Democratic leaders in the New Hampshire House refrained from engaging in the gun background checks debate it was clear they were keeping their powder dry for future battles.

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Posted Mar. 14, 2014 at 2:00 AM

Posted Mar. 14, 2014 at 2:00 AM

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When Democratic leaders in the New Hampshire House refrained from engaging in the gun background checks debate it was clear they were keeping their powder dry for future battles.

On Wednesday we learned that three of those battles are to repeal the death penalty, increase the minimum wage and to decriminalize marijuana. The House approved all three of these bills, which we also support, and now the fight moves on to the State Senate.

First, we want to congratulate Hampton Rep. Renny Cushing, a former member of our editorial board, for successfully leading the death penalty repeal effort in the House. Cushing, whose father was murdered in 1988 and who more recently lost his brother-in-law to murder, knows the pain violent crime inflicts not just on victims but on their families. But he is persuasive when he argues that answering murder with state-sanctioned killing neither heals nor provides a sense of justice to victims.

The death penalty, Cushing said yesterday on the House floor, "would only give more power to the murderers, more power to the killer. If we let those who kill turn us into killers, evil triumphs, violence triumphs."

Judge Walter Murphy, who led the state's study commission on the death penalty reached a similar conclusion, and also argued that there is no convincing proof that the death penalty is a deterrent to violent crime.

"There is no assurance that the death penalty does what its advocates claim is its purpose; nor is there any reason to believe it is necessary for public safety," Murphy wrote in the commission's final report. "The alternative, that is, life without the possibility of parole, offers the same protection without the attendant risks of mistakes and without the vast expense both monetary and otherwise."

House members testified that the expense of putting to death Michael Addison for the murder of on-duty police officer Michael Briggs in 2006, has reached $8 million to $10 million.

The House bill, which now goes to the Senate, would not apply to Addison's death penalty.

As we have stated in previous editorials, we support repeal of the death penalty because the risk of error is too high, the cost is exorbitant, it doesn't help victims heal and has not been proven a deterrent to crime. For these reasons we urge the Senate to pass the death penalty repeal bill.

Wednesday the House also passed a bill raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.25 in 2015, $9 in 2016 and to tie future yearly increases to the Consumer Price Index. Full time minimum wage workers earn approximately $15,000 a year. The 2013 poverty level for a single person is $11,000 for a single person and $15,000 for a two person household.

A recent poll conducted by WMUR and the UNH Survey Center found that 59 percent of residents strongly support the increase and another 17 percent somewhat support it. Only eight percent strongly oppose it and 5 percent somewhat oppose it. The remainder of those surveyed said they are neutral or don't know enough to have an opinion.

One of the more compelling arguments we have heard in favor of raising the minimum wage is that when companies pay workers near-poverty wages the workers rely on food stamps and other government subsidies to make ends meet. This means that taxpayers are making up for wages the companies aren't paying, artificially inflating company profits (and executive bonuses) at taxpayer expense.

Democrats across the nation have made increasing the minimum wage a top priority this year and we certainly agree that more good than harm would come from an incremental increase in the minimum wage for hard-working men and women.

In our view decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana is a no-brainer. Locking someone up for less than an ounce of marijuana is an incredible waste of precious public safety resources that could be much better directed at preventing dangerous crime and locking up hardened criminals. A fine similar to non-felony liquor violations is more than enough punishment.